[Reuters] - Shuttle diplomacy by the United States' envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition brokered an oil deal between Iraq and its Kurdish region vital to a climactic battle with the jihadists, diplomats, officials and oil men say.
The oil revenue-sharing deal sealed in August was critical to getting the central and regional governments to coordinate planning for a push on the Islamic State stronghold Mosul, which Kurdish peshmerga forces surround on three sides, as soon as this month, the sources said.
Brett McGurk shuttled from Iraqi Kurdistan capital Erbil to Baghdad and back again from the first half of April, culminating in a June 19 meeting in Erbil with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Massoud Barzani and Iraqi National Security Advisor Falah Fayad.
Barzani "met McGurk and said, 'We cannot afford Mosul. We need oil and revenues back," said a high level source close to the Kurds. "If it wasn't for McGurk, this deal would have never happened."
The Kurdish region is home to Iraq's major northern oilfields but a quarrel over who benefits from export revenues has become a prolonged, tangled and emotive dispute.
In early 2014 Baghdad slashed funds to the KRG, which then began exporting oil independently via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. 
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